Henry L. and Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation Professor of LawPh.D., University of Michigan, 1984J.D., University of Michigan Law School, 1981A.B., Dartmouth College, 1978

Law and economics expert Jason Scott Johnston joined the Virginia Law faculty in 2010 and serves as the Henry L. and Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation Professor of Law . He formerly served as the the Nicholas E. Chimicles Research Professor in Business Law and Regulation at Virginia Law, and the Robert G. Fuller, Jr. Professor of Law and director of the Program on Law, Environment and Economy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Johnston’s scholarship has examined subjects ranging from natural resources law to torts and contracts. He has published dozens of articles in law journals, such as the Yale Law Journal, and in peer-reviewed economics journals, such as the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization. He is currently working on a book that critically analyzes the foundations of global warming law and policy, a series of articles on the economics of regulatory science and another series of articles on various aspects of the law and economics of consumer protection. He has served on the Board of Directors of the American Law and Economics Association, on the National Science Foundation’s Law and Social Science grant review panel, and on the Board of the Searle Civil Justice Institute. He won Penn Law’s Robert A. Gorman Award for Teaching Excellence in 2003.

After earning his A.B. from Dartmouth College and both his J.D. and Ph.D. (economics) from the University of Michigan, Johnston clerked for Judge Gilbert S. Merritt on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He then taught at Vermont Law School and Vanderbilt Law School before joining Penn’s faculty. He has been a visiting professor or held fellowship appointments at Yale Law School, the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, the American Academy in Berlin and the Property and Environment Research Center.

“The Law and Economics of Environmental Federalism: Europe and the United States Compared,” 27 Va. Envtl. L.J. 205-274 (2009).HeinOnline (PDF)

"Fashioning Entitlements: A Comparative Law and Economic Analysis of the Judicial Role in Environmental Centralization in the U.S. and Europe" (with Michael G. Faure), in Responsibility and Governance (Giorgio Brosio, et. al., eds., Edward Elgar, 2009).

"Tradable Pollution Permits and the Regulatory Game," in Moving to Markets in Environmental Regulation: Lessons from Twenty Years of Experience 353-385 (Charles Kolstad and Jody Freeman, eds., Oxford University Press, 2007).PDF